Re:Windows93
by laumars on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:05PM
(#22479158)
> Or just VESA and Windows' optimized 2D libraries. GDI is a good example.
From what I remember of GDI (and admittedly it's been a while since I've done graphics development on Windows) GDI wasn't designed for real time animations. It was more designed for static (or at least semi-static) scenes like image editing. Real time transformations is a whole different ball game.
Either way, GDI certainly wasn't optimised. If you wanted optimised then you'd have used DirectDraw (which doesn't exist now but back then it was a thing).
> Most 2D FXs don't require a hard computation.
But we're not talking about "fx" as you keep calling it, we're talking about real time transformations interacting with multiple different canvases (to borrow a term from web development). Wobbly windows is a whole different ball game to transparent forms. Then you need to factor in that those transformations need to happen without slowing desktop performance.
Windows 9x used to do really basic "animations" which required no transformation effects and even that used to get turned off by a great many people on modest hardware because of the impact it had on performance.
You're just not being realistic about either the transformation effects in question (repeatedly moving the goal posts to basic translucency on stationary forms) nor the hardware of the era in question.
> Seriously, Enlightenment did those in software.
Enlightenment is a seriously cool piece of engineering but it didn't do compositing until E16. And it wasn't even the early versions of E16 either. So we're not talking late 90s / early 00s there either.
Also did Enlightenment really do that in software or are you just assuming it did?
> You underestimate what could've done in software in the 90's, especially when memory protection under w9x was nil and everything was much more low level.
Graphics development was not more low level. The opposite was actually the problem: Windows APIs lacked direct hardware access the early part of the 9x life time. In fact literally the entire point of GDI was to offer an approximation of what could be done with direct hardware access but without giving Windows developers low level APIs. The obvious side-effect of that is a massive performance hit. There was a reason DirectDraw was so sorely needed and a reason why a great many games developers still favoured DOS for the early part of 9x's life.
> Windows 98 could do these with 3rd party software.
But it didn't do real time transformation effects and that 3rd party software often ran like a sack of shit on peoples systems. Usually the people you saw who ran it well were gamers on high end systems.
> Debian Woody was almost like late 90's for obvious reasons.
No it wasn't. It was released in 2002[1]. The testing repo for woody wasn't even created until mid December 2000[2] (so basically 2001).
From what I remember of GDI (and admittedly it's been a while since I've done graphics development on Windows) GDI wasn't designed for real time animations. It was more designed for static (or at least semi-static) scenes like image editing. Real time transformations is a whole different ball game.
Either way, GDI certainly wasn't optimised. If you wanted optimised then you'd have used DirectDraw (which doesn't exist now but back then it was a thing).
> Most 2D FXs don't require a hard computation.
But we're not talking about "fx" as you keep calling it, we're talking about real time transformations interacting with multiple different canvases (to borrow a term from web development). Wobbly windows is a whole different ball game to transparent forms. Then you need to factor in that those transformations need to happen without slowing desktop performance.
Windows 9x used to do really basic "animations" which required no transformation effects and even that used to get turned off by a great many people on modest hardware because of the impact it had on performance.
You're just not being realistic about either the transformation effects in question (repeatedly moving the goal posts to basic translucency on stationary forms) nor the hardware of the era in question.
> Seriously, Enlightenment did those in software.
Enlightenment is a seriously cool piece of engineering but it didn't do compositing until E16. And it wasn't even the early versions of E16 either. So we're not talking late 90s / early 00s there either.
Also did Enlightenment really do that in software or are you just assuming it did?
> You underestimate what could've done in software in the 90's, especially when memory protection under w9x was nil and everything was much more low level.
Graphics development was not more low level. The opposite was actually the problem: Windows APIs lacked direct hardware access the early part of the 9x life time. In fact literally the entire point of GDI was to offer an approximation of what could be done with direct hardware access but without giving Windows developers low level APIs. The obvious side-effect of that is a massive performance hit. There was a reason DirectDraw was so sorely needed and a reason why a great many games developers still favoured DOS for the early part of 9x's life.
> Windows 98 could do these with 3rd party software.
But it didn't do real time transformation effects and that 3rd party software often ran like a sack of shit on peoples systems. Usually the people you saw who ran it well were gamers on high end systems.
> Debian Woody was almost like late 90's for obvious reasons.
No it wasn't. It was released in 2002[1]. The testing repo for woody wasn't even created until mid December 2000[2] (so basically 2001).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history#Debian_...
[2] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detail...